Elimination of poverty is a major challenge: Finance Minister

 The Dollar Business Bureau “The government has launched a flurry of activities to promote investments, correct tax aberrations, carried out auctions and divestments and introduced a whole lot of measures to improve the economy ever since it came to power,” said Arun Jaitley, Union Minister of Finance. With energy prices dropping, lowering the weight on import bills, India will soon see a reduction in inflationary pressures too, but elimination of poverty is the biggest challenge that India is currently facing today, he added. Launching the Union Bank of India (UK), a subsidiary of the Union Bank of India, Jaitley said that India is emerging as one of the fastest growing economies and India’s GDP growth rate will be 7.5 per cent this year. Earlier in this week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasted a growth of 7.2% for 2014-15 and 7.5% for 2015-16, based on the recently revised GDP methodology. The Indian economy is reviving, helped by positive policy actions that have improved confidence and by lower global oil prices, said the IMF in its annual assessment of the Indian economy Recently, speaking at a session, ‘Indian Economy: The Way Forward’, conducted at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, the Union Finance Minister said that there is a need for India to reach 8% growth rate this year, grow it further and aim for 9-10 % growth rate and then continue the same pace in further years and that is what that India requires to achieve better development. The Finance Minister stated that the investment available within India is very modest and the Indian banks are enough capable of providing good investments, the Minister also called for investments from any source that has got the scope to provide better investment support.  

This article was published on March 14, 2015.